


Forget the Words

by QueSeraAwesome



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Drabble Collection, Everyone Is Alive, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, and, will contain
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-26
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2018-02-18 19:29:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2359613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueSeraAwesome/pseuds/QueSeraAwesome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nobody ever really asked Wash what Agent Maine was to him. Nobody ever thought they needed to. </p><p>A series of short standalones on Agent Maine and Agent Washington and their relationship that were too short to put up on their own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Maine is not amused. He is the opposite of amused. Everyone is pinned down, taking fire, no one knows where Wash is, and Carolina’s yelling at York through the radio again, which is normally funny, but right now it's just annoying. And loud.

He doesn’t know where Wash is.

He swings out of cover, picks off the last of the guards in his sector, slings his battle rifle onto his back. He could really use a bigger gun. There’s still yelling on the channels from where North and South are taking out their section, where Carolina and York are either flirting, in some sort of weird foreplay ritual, or actually having trouble with their sector. Probably York’s fault. He lowers the volume. Carolina will call if she needs him, and he’s got a missing partner to find. He surveys the empty and faintly smoking carpark, orders the HUD to find Wash’s signal, waits patiently while the system scans.

Wash’s armor signal is coming from under the crushed remains of a jeep.

His steps feel heavier as he approaches the twisted wreck, walks around the back, just to be sure. No. Definitely under.

Agent Maine has gone by many names, has been asked to do many things for the UNSC. He hadn’t wanted to all of them. Hadn’t enjoyed all of them. This is one of the things he’d prefer he didn’t have to do.

Maine lifts the heaping wreck of the jeep a few inches, groaning with the effort and peers under.

"Heeeey," Wash says, curled into the tiny amount of space between the jeep and the ground. "I’m stuck."

Maine blinks. _Are you fucking kidding me?_

"I can’t get enough leverage to get it off," Wash says. "Seriously, what is with my luck with cars?"

Maine considers just walking away. But no. He can’t. Wash is his team. (He might leave York. Causes too much screaming comparable to his tactical advantage anyway.) He considers walking away just to fuck with Wash. _Stop getting yourself into this kind of shit, idiot._

"Haven’t killed you yet," he says.

The _Sounds like luck to me_ , goes unspoken. Wash has always been good at filling in his silences with what he means.

"Hurt?" Maine asks, considering how to start freeing Wash without crushing him.

"A little banged up," Wash laughs. "Armor took most of it. Man, I don’t even know how I survived that."

Maine grunts. He’s not sure he can lift the whole thing. He should get Carolina to requisition more force mods for the armor. If these idiots are gonna be getting themselves stuck under shit like this, he’ll need them.

"Are you mad at me?" Wash asks, as Maine works on getting the wreck of the jeep off of him.

He grunts a reply, a nonverbal _No_ , that’s clearly a lie.

"I didn’t mean to get stuck," Wash whines. "I was focusing on not letting the wrecked jeep crush any of my limbs. Or my head."

Maine growls an angry _Shut up_ at him. He’s officially annoyed. Doesn’t need to hear that shit right now.

It takes another ten minutes to get the wreck propped up enough so Wash can crawl out.

"Phew," Wash says, "Thanks, man."

Maine growls unhappily at him.

"Maine, Wash, come in!" Carolina snaps over the radio. "Go help the Dakotas, they’re taking heavy fire and pinned! York and I are getting close to the objective, we can’t turn back now. What’s taking you so long?"

"Wash got stuck under a ‘Hog," Maine says, before Wash can reply. Probably the most words he’s ever said over the radio at any one time. Wash is scowling at him. Maine can tell.

"….Are you kidding me?" Carolina asks, tone icy.

"That’s fucking hilarious," York chips in over the line.

"Yeah, it’s really fucking hilarious that we’re gonna die over here while you buttmunches laugh it up," South snaps. "Get your asses over here! We need some Heavy Action, now!"

"I can’t believe you sold me out like that," Wash says.

Maine shrugs.

"C’mon, big guy. Let’s go."


	2. Chapter 2

"Nope," Wash says, grinning and holding Maine’s lunch card behind his back, somehow just out of Maine’s ridiculous reach. "You forgot to say the magic word!"

Maine growls at him.

"That is not it," Wash teases. "Not even close."

"Jerk."

"Warmer. Actual words."

"Asshole."

"Colder," Wash replies. "Ice cold."

Maine glares (He doesn’t get the reference. He’s not going to show it.) And, yes, he’s been missing Wash too with all the training they’ve been doing, but this is not the way to get his attention. Maine is hungry.

He sighs, long-suffering. And just for a second, Wash relaxes, drops his guard.

Before Wash can react, Maine grabs him bodily by the waist and throws him over his shoulder, strides off towards the cafeteria. If Wash doesn’t give up the card by then, he’ll just put the whole Freelancer on the table to pay.

"That’s cheating, Maine!" Wash yells, but his smile’s leaked into his voice. "Filthy rotten cheating."

Maine snorts, continues down the hallway. A couple of the lower-level guards stare.

"What are you looking at?" Wash demands. "Never seen a special forces agent carried around like a sack of potatoes before?"

The guards flee. Maine snorts a laugh.

"Don’t even fucking think about it," Wash tells him. "You put me in a bridal carry, I will kick you in the nose, I swear to god."


	3. Chapter 3

Her name is Abbie, and she’s four years old. She’s got her hair up in two big puffs, is wearing a Minnie Mouse jumper, and she’s pretty much the cutest thing Agent Washington has seen in about six months.

She’s also really probably definitely not supposed to be in the Freelancer section of the ship, even if they’re in dry dock right now and lots of the crew are visiting family and over half the Freelancers are running around on-planet probably getting into massive amounts of trouble, and aren’t even around to trip over her.

She’s very calm for a little lost girl, but it probably has a lot to do with where she’s sitting right now.

Maine’s currently got her sitting on his shoulders, patting out a rhythm on his helmet like it’s a drum. Which doesn’t seem to bother the agent in question at all.

"Just say when you see your dad, okay Abbie?" Wash tells her, as they start walking through the commissary. That had been his idea; if he had a lost kid, the first place he’d check is the food. He’s not sure Maine had much of a plan when Wash found the two of them roaming the halls.

She nods, keeps tapping away.

"You’re really tall," she tells Agent Maine. Wash stifles a laugh.

"Yes," Maine says.

"I’m gonna be tall like you one day," Abbie tells him. "I drink my milk."

"That’s good."

"Abbie!" a voice yells, and a frazzled look guard comes running over to them. He halts uncertainly in front of Agent Maine, glancing between the two agents and his daughter. "Um."

"Hi, Daddy!" Abbie says. "I found friends!"

Maine grunts an agreement and she pets his helmet. Wash bites his lip.

"Maine found her in the Freelancer Quarters section," he tells the guard. "No idea how she got there, but we figured she probably belonged to somebody who’d be looking for her."

"We had an adventure," Abbie chips in, holding her arms out for her father. "I learned about spaceships."

"You shouldn’t run off, Abbie," the guard says, taking his daughter in his arms. "Thank you, Agent Maine. Sorry about this, she’s just good at escaping. I hope she didn’t cause you any trouble."

Maine grunts.

"No problem at all," Wash translates. "But we better get back, our shuttle leaves soon. Bye, Abbie!"

"Bye, Agent!" Abbie says, waving as her father walks away. "Bye, Mister Maine!"

Maine waves back.

"I think you missed your calling, buddy," Wash laughs. "Professional babysitter."

Maine snorts. Basically do that already, he means.


	4. Chapter 4

The hand that falls on his shoulder is familiar. He knows that hand.

That’s why he throws it off of him, the violence in the action surprising even himself.

"Don’t fucking touch me," he growls.

The Meta tilts his helmet at him, growls an interrogative.

"You heard me," Wash says. "I know you understood that."

The helmet bobs, just slightly.

He even stands wrong. He’s not sure how, what Sigma and the others changed in his brain, but somehow they’ve even found a way to fundamentally alter the way he moved when they overcrowded his brain up with circuitry and lights. Even in stillness. He’s wrong.

"This is a partnership," Wash says. "We get Epsilon, we turn him in, we get free of this shit. We go our separate ways. We’re not friends. We’re not…"

The Meta stares. Waiting for him to finish his thought. Maine never waiting that long on anything. Except maybe Was— no. That’s not a thought he’s allowed to have, not now.

"We’re not anything, not anymore."

Back at the OSC, when they’d told him who they wanted him to work with, he’d balked. He’d demanded one thing before he’d agreed. Just one thing.

The Meta hadn’t liked the idea of taking his helmet off (Maine never had either. Spartan types don’t like to be out of armor) but he’d settled when Wash had come into the room. Had stilled against the men restraining him as the sound of Wash's boots had echoed loud on the cement floor, walked right up to him. He hadn’t resisted when Wash had taken his helmet off.

That little thing, that action had been enough to give Wash some measure of hope. But that hope died the second he’d gotten a good look at those eyes. Wrong. Not Maine. The lights were on, the AI gone, but what was left….

Wash knows what Maine’s eyes looked like. He knows what his eyes looked like when he looked at him.

"I don’t know what you are," Wash says. "But you’re not him."

The Meta seems to evaluate the thought, Wash can feel him scanning his body language, for what he’s not sure. Then he nods, once.

"Go establish a perimeter," Wash orders.

The Meta goes.


	5. Chapter 5

Agent Maine wakes up at the bottom, which is the most accurate phrase to describe how it feels to wake up at the bottom of a cliff with the knowledge that you are directly responsible for the deaths of most of the people you ever came close to caring about, and how sincerely you tried to kill the one that mattered most. The Meta, whatever it/he was, is gone, shaken loose, and if Wash were here he’d make a reference, something about cognitive recalibration, but Wash isn’t here. He’s at the top of the cliff somewhere, if he hasn’t bled out by now from his injuries. The ones Maine gave him.

Maine doesn’t climb the cliff to find out. It’s too late for him either way.


	6. Chapter 6

Wash’s figured out the doohicky in the crashed ship shows alternate universes. He’s seen himself dying on Reach, sent to Blood Gulch in place of Flowers, running around with Eta at his side tagteaming with South, locked in a psych ward, kissing a dark haired woman on an airstrip, and wearing yellow with gray accents.

The screen shifts again.

It’s back, back at the snow, the UNSC soldiers taking his gray and yellow armor away, himself in the blue and yellow he wears now, next to Tucker and Caboose. They’re talking. He doesn’t know what they’re saying. The wind is howling too loud. The Other Washington nods, turns to walk away. Wash just catches the words _I have to be sure_ yelled over his shoulder.

He walks toward the cliff, determination in his step. Starts to climb down.

Wash almost turns the screen off. He doesn’t want to see. (He does. His hands are clutching at the corners of the desk, he doesn’t dare blink. He does. Because he thought about it. He thought about making sure. But he walked away. He let him go.) It takes forever for this Other Agent Washington to make it to the bottom. His hands hurt, his lungs hurt, his eyes hurt and go blurry as this Other Wash finally puts boots down at the bottom of the cliff.

There it is. There _he_ is.

The Meta is lying on his back. Limbs sprawled, the impact clear, the snow disturbed where he slid after he fell. The snow’s still falling, has covered him in a fine dusting. The scene is all violent peace, the way Maine always managed to make the two work together.

He isn’t moving. He’s still. Wash exhales, long and slow. Controlled. They’re both still.

The Other Wash takes off his helmet, lets it fall in the snow. It must be freezing, the arctic wind whipping at his short hair, sprinkles of snowdrift adhering to his eyelashes already. His mouth is grim. His eyes are sad.

The other Agent Washington kneels over the fallen soldier in the snow, like you would with a fallen comrade, gently cradles his head in his hands. There’s a crack in his helmet, like a scar. Nothing like Tex’s fractured faceplate, just a line of demarcation just a bit left of center. Almost where York’s scar had been, and there’s something Wash finds darkly almost funny about that. The Other Wash slips fingers under the Meta’s unresisting jaw. Unseals his helmet. Takes it off. Probably for the first time in years.

Maine’s face looks much the same. Sunken cheeks. Deep grooves in his forehead, around his eyes. His hair has grown out. But much the same. Very much familiar, even now.

A shudder passes through this other Wash (it’s just the cold. Just the cold) and he lowers his head, rests their foreheads together. His lips are moving. He’s saying something. His eyes are shut tight. Wash’s eyes are open. Because he wants to see. Because Wash is thankful, so, so thankful, that at least _somewhere_ , he got to say goodbye. He’s seen enough. He moves to shut off the screen.

That is when the Meta stirs.

The other Wash starts, scrambles back, away from the form lying in the snow. Snatches up his battle rifle, centers it on the Meta’s chest. His head. His chest again. He can’t seem to decide.

The body stirs again.

The way he moves is strange. Familiar. Not the Meta. The Meta didn’t move like Maine, never had. Alien. Too smooth. Electric.

The Meta opens his eyes, and Maine is looking back at him.

Maine is looking back at him.

The— It— He sits up, hands flying to his head. The other Wash brandishes his battle rifle, yells something. It— He— looks up at the other Wash. He recognizes him. Wash can see his throat working, the scar tissue shifting. He’s saying something. Growling something. An interrogative, from his expression. He can read the words on his own lips. _Maine? Is that you? What happened to the Meta? Is he still in there?_

The Meta— It— He stares blankly at the Other Wash for too long a moment, and Wash’s stomach starts to sink. And then he— The expression on his— on Maine’s face changes. Crumbles. Eyes shut tight. Mouth set in misery. Head curled in. He knows, he can read it. He could always read Maine. Guilt. Grief. Sorrow. So much sorrow.

It’s Maine. It’s _him_.

The other Wash drops his rifle, _oh my god_ on his lips. He falls to his knees in the snow next to him, tucks his thumbs under Maine’s chin, makes him look at him and Maine doesn’t fight him, he just tilts his head up, but won’t open his eyes. The Other Wash’s lips are moving rapidly, he’s saying something,words too quick for Wash to catch except for the repetition of Maine, Maine, and Maine is trying to pull away. The other Wash tightens his grip on Maine’s neck, a desperate clutch and Maine leans into that pressure, into that touch, and he still won’t open his eyes. The other Wash presses their foreheads together, lips still moving, and that’s when Wash sees it.

A tiny aborted tilt of the chin from Maine.

Wash knows that, he knows _him_ , this other Maine, this living Maine, he knows what that tiny, suppressed tilt of the chin means, what it always meant, and—

And the other Wash saw it too because he leans forward, lips still moving until he presses them chastely against Maine’s.

Everything is still. Wash can’t hear anything but the roar of the wind from the screen and the beat of his own heart in his ears, the pressure of his own breaths. They’re still, sitting in the snow together, mouths touching, almost too tentative to even be called a kiss.

Wash aches.

It’s slow, the way an approaching avalanche looks slow, the way Maine begins to lean into him. The way his hand hesitatingly, gently closes around the Other Wash’s elbow. The way he tilts his head into the kiss and the Other Wash sighs into the kiss like a gust of wind, leans further into him. The way their mouths open for each other, the way they aren’t still anymore.

Wash stumbles back away from the screen, ass hitting the ground with a thump before he’s realized his legs have folded.

The screen shuts off.

His lungs heave, the world heaves around him. Wash closes his eyes. The sound of the wind is still roaring in his ears. He curls around himself, desperate for that sound to go away, but it’s all he can hear, dragging him under.

When he manages to open his eyes again, it’s gotten dark out. He can hear Tucker and Caboose calling for him. It must have been hours. His joints are aching from stilling curled in the same position for so long.

He’s almost glad for that pain. The easy kind of pain.

Agent Washington gets to his feet and walks away. It’s all he can do, now.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> drunk and broke into the wrong house/window instead of your friend's place AU

So the thing is, Wash is drunk and the window might just be currently smarter than him. Except it isn't because he manages to get it open after all, but maybe it is because then he’s falling through it and then it’s farther than he thought and then he’s landing hard on what might be a couch and it smells like cinnamon in here and he doesn’t _like_ cinnamon something is wrong and then the world’s dropping away again, he’s going up?

When Wash gets his eyes open, this gigantic marine-looking type he’s never seen before’s got him scruffed like a naughty kitten and giving him the same look you give a kitten when they do something wrong, but it's still, like, adorable?  
  
"What’s that word for when two people meet," Wash asks drunkenly, "Like, in a weird accident or whatever and it’ll be a great story later, but right now it’s just like, fuck? Cause _fuck_."

**Author's Note:**

> queseraawesome.tumblr.com


End file.
